Sudeley Castle: the curious life and death of Katherine Parr

Divorced, beheaded, died. Divorced, beheaded, survived. How on earth did Katherine Parr – or, as she signed herself firmly, “Kateryn the Quene KP” – manage it? As Wife No 6 to the obese, choleric, dangerous serial bridegroom King Henry VIII she not only outlived him but managed to die a natural death (or at least died of puerperal fever following childbirth and not on the block).

She did so at Sudeley Castle in Gloucestershire, a golden pile, part-ruined, set in a natural dimple in the Cotswold Hills and owned since the 19th century by the Dent-Brocklehurst family. This year is the 500th anniversary of Katherine’s birth; rather than wait 36 long years to commemorate her death, the management of Sudeley has decided to mark the occasion by re-enacting her funeral. This will include the Rector of Winchcombe & Sudeley as her personal preacher, the Protestant theologian Miles Coverdale; live commentary during the service by Dr David Starkey (who will also give a lunchtime lecture); and a funeral procession – not strictly accurate, but much more fun – through the castle’s very attractive gardens.

Dr David Starkey will give a lunchtime lecture

Lady Ashcombe, Sudeley’s current chatelaine, opened the castle to the public in the 1970s. “We started with a very well researched exhibition called Royal Sudeley,” she explains, “and we discovered that Katherine had been buried here for over 200 years before they found her tomb by mistake in 1782. She is the only English Queen to be buried in a private house. She’s our star turn, really.”

KP’s body had been swaddled in cloth and encased in form-fitting lead. When unwrapped she still had her hair, teeth and nails, and her flesh was “soft and moist and the weight of her hand and arm as those of a living body”. Within a year she had putrefied, but locks of her hair and a mounted, blackened tooth are on display in the exhibition today. Children will love it.

The archivist at Sudeley is Jean Bray, a former journalist and Winchcombe resident, who takes me on a walk around the castle. “We were on the royalist side,” she says drily, as we survey the picturesque remains of the castle trashed in the English Civil War. “The castle was slighted. They just took off the roof and let the weather do the rest.” To modern eyes, the weather has done a rather beautiful job: foliage has crept through the blank-eyed Tudor windows and encroached on the blinded Gothic arches. A small knot garden occupies what used to be an inner courtyard. It is wildly romantic, a Keatsian dream.

A door locked for decades has now been specially opened so that the funeral procession can pass out of the house, beneath an arbour and up some steps to the family chapel of ease, St Mary’s Sudeley, where the body was found and Katherine’s funeral took place 500 years ago. This was probably the regular route to chapel used by KP and her young protégée, the ill-fated Lady Jane Grey, who lived with her here and was an official mourner at her death.

That mourning scene is re-enacted with some mawkishness in the side chapel, but it sits perfectly with the wholesale Victorian revamp completed by George Gilbert Scott in 1863. A new marble tomb was built on which her effigy lies, tall and elegant, with four crests carved on the side; four crests because Katherine had four husbands before her death aged 36 – Henry was her third.

Our image of Katherine Parr – perhaps because we know she used to allow Henry to rest his ulcerated leg on her lap and was a kindly stepmother to his children – is as rather a mumsy creature. In fact, she was ultra-fashionable: there are records of orders for yards of sumptuous black velvet and blue satin and a rare full-length portrait shows her dressed to the nines, complete with fab jewellery.

She was in love with the wily courtier Thomas Seymour, brother to Queen Jane and uncle to the future Edward VI. She was also deeply devout, possibly persuaded to marry Henry to further the Protestant cause. On his death she married Seymour fast, and fell from favour, but she was still a Dowager Queen and the Somerset Herald was sent to attend her funeral.

A recreation of Katherine lying in state

“I didn’t realise how important the date of her death was in the history of the Church of England,” says Lady Ashcombe. “Her funeral was the first Protestant funeral service held in English.” John Partington, the rector, agrees. He has planned the service and will wear a black Canterbury cap – a square, soft hat with pointy corners – and a plain black cassock for the occasion. Mason & Stokes, the local funeral directors, will supply the coffin. This and the church rails will be draped in black. The original music has been lost but the Reverend Partington thinks it would have been austere, far more so than the music they will be using when the choir sings in the chapel in this autumn of 2012.

“It might seem strange to celebrate her birth with a re-enactment of her death,” he muses, “but we mark her death on September 5 every year anyway, and it did happen at a huge turning point in history, a year before the first English liturgy was published in the Book of Common Prayer.”

Staff at Sudeley are not focusing only on the funeral. The little rooms leading off the State Apartments in South Hall have been refurbished Tudor-style, there is a new film about Katherine and a new exhibition on her life that opened in April. For me, this is the highlight of the day: it’s not often you see artefacts of this calibre outside a national museum – they had to get reinforced cabinets to satisfy the insurers.

Katherine's personal copy of Sermon of Saint Chrystosom

Jean shows me exquisite prayer books written by Katherine herself, one stitched into a valuable binding by the nuns at nearby Little Gidding. When Henry died, she stored her jewels, many of which were her own, in the Tower, but Edward Seymour – her new husband’s even wilier brother and the young king’s protector – wouldn’t give them back. In one letter she writes that she hates him so much she would like to bite him.

It would be wonderful to know what KP and her fellow Tudors would think of her 2012 funeral and procession: I think it’s going to be a hoot. They’re going to do it twice, once in the morning and once in the afternoon. So Kateryn the Quene, anything but mumsy, will be the only English queen buried in a private house, the first one to have a Protestant funeral service spoken entirely in English, and the only one in history to have had three funerals. Bravo, KP.

Sudeley Castle essentials

Admission to Sudeley Castle (01242 604244, www.sudeleycastle.co.uk), including South Hall and the Katherine Parr rooms, costs £11.50 adults, £10 concessions and £6 children aged between five and 15 (under-fives free).

The funeral re-enactment will be held at St Mary’s church, within Sudeley’s grounds, at 10.30am on Sunday September 9 and will be repeated at 2.30pm in the afternoon. Ticket holders will each be allocated a role and rank and given a suitable memento to take away.

Sophie Campbell stayed at Sudeley Castle Cottages (01242 609 481; sudeleycastle.co.uk/cottages), between the castle and the village of Winchcombe. Cottages sleep between two and six people and rates start at £284 per week in winter and £651 in summer. Short breaks available midweek at specified periods for 75 per cent of the cost.

The White Hart (01242 602359; www.whitehartwinchcombe.co.uk) serves an excellent English breakfast for £5.95. The recently refurbished Lion Inn (01242 603300; www.the-lion-inn.co.uk), on North Street has a nice, light, contemporary menu using ingredients from local suppliers when possible.